California's Hidden Hunger Strike

Conditions in California prisons are so bad that a panel of federal judges ruled that they violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Inmates in a third of California's prisons are conducting a hunger strike in protest at the solitary confinement policy. As of Friday, July 8, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reports 6,600 prisoners in at least 13 state prisons joined the hunger strike. Recent reports show that many inmates, who are in their third week of the strike, have shown dramatic weight loss and are collapsing from starvation. The protesting inmates, who are most active at Pelican Bay State Prison, Corcoran State Prison, and the California Correctional Institute at Tehachapi, have been refusing meals since July 1. The prisoners have mounted a strike to call attention to the disciplinary and administrative abuse they are being subjected to. The hunger strike has transcended the gang and geographic affiliations that traditionally divide prisoners.

Many of the protesters are in solitary confinement, otherwise known as security housing units (SHU).The SHU is a “prison-within-a-prison”. It is a “cell block within a cell block”. They are 6x 10 foot cells. The walls are soundproof, the floor is cement, there cells are windowless, there are a few dime-sized holes in a metal door and prisoners in the SHU are locked down nearly twenty-three hours of the day. 69% of last year’s suicides occurred in units where inmates are isolated for 23 hours a day.

Protesting inmates have five core demands:
1. "Eliminate group punishments" and instead enforce individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race or ethnicity. The prisoners are asking that this practice stop and that those individuals that commit the infraction be the only ones punished.
2. Abolish debriefing policies, which dictate that inmates in SHU can only be released into the regular prison population if they provide information on gang activity. This "gang" could be a genuine criminal organization or a radical political group. It doesn't even matter whether the prisoner ever joined a "gang" or any organization the authorities label a "gang." However, once inmates have this label attached to their record, they are sent to a SHU where they can spend years in isolation unless they "debrief" (snitch). Prisoners unable to take the isolation units will either provide real information on a gang member or, if they are not gang members or unwilling to provide real information, they will make up stories to get out of isolation. This process ensures a never-ending supply of prisoners for the SHUs.
3. Make prisons comply with the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) to end long-term solitary confinement. Headed by a former US attorney general and a former chief judge of the US court of appeals it stated: "People who pose no real threat to anyone and also those who are mentally ill are languishing for months or years in high-security units ... In some places, the environment is so severe that people end up completely isolated, confined in constantly bright or constantly dim spaces without any meaningful human contact - torturous conditions that are proven to cause mental deterioration. Prisoners often are released directly from solitary confinement and other high-security units directly to the streets, despite the clear dangers of doing so."
4. "Provide adequate food" and sanitary conditions in solitary confinement.
5. Have the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation expand and provide education programs and other privileges for SHU inmates. SHU inmates in California prisons are not allowed to “to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities...." This demand asks that they be provided such opportunities.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, both in numbers and as a percentage of population. As of June 2009, 2,297,400 people were incarcerated in the U.S., a rate of 748 inmates per 100,000 residents. The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country on earth, accounting for 25 percent of the world's prisoners, despite having just five percent of the world's population. There are at least 75,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day in America.

Prison is an indictment of the capitalist system. Prison means punishment, generally punishment for the infraction of property laws. In the more exceptional cases of punishment for personal crimes, it results in the further alienation of already psychologically damaged individuals, who need treatment not punishment.

The prisoners are demanding to be treated as human beings. Repression breeds resistance!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/us/08hunger.html